Logan February​

Corpus Vile

The child is

a violin wrapped in

dirty blood. He came

& didn't demand milk.

a stranger

We don't quite know

why the boy is here,

thought that door was sealed,

Nobody gets it.

we had a riddle

a glowing lump of brittle--

who didn't know sleep

We have tried to rectify this.

The child dreams

& lasts a lifetime

without waking,
 

small & rounded. Perhaps,

brown-skin &

from the outside

This is how I am,

in my own home.

how I was born,

by myself. My mother

was surprised to have me.

She didn't know what to do--

with me. So I did it myself,

fed, wiped, vanished. I was a mother

for a hundred days.

Now, I have grown so tired.

of my own milk. It reeks

of small compromise. I want to sleep

after all of this acting.

---

The Mannequin's Samsara

Sometimes I find myself dangerously close
to the meaning of life, until it slips away again.
To a hawk, gravity must be an annoying rumor.
I understand this crisis too well. My song is
loudest at my ribs, with no one close enough to
 
hear it. I am plagued with the predicament of hiding.
Imagine a small, brown house. Inside it,
rooms so clean they must be full of ghosts.
The foreboding closet door, rattling. Behind it lies
a heavy coat of black velvet & fox fur. Beneath that,
 
the boy's racing heart, his hairy legs, blood rushing
beside folded bone. This exact heat I was born into.
The self buried in the self. Why does no one cook
the cow's bladder? Is it not infused with sweet water?
Is it not close to the womb? Only in dreams
 
do we know what is precious. The girl who failed
her semester drowns her guts in battery acid.
Her oblivious grandfather uses his glass eye
as a paperweight when he reads the news
by candlelight. A delicate wisp of smoke slips
 
out the window, into the night. Even fire
must separate itself from its darkness.
Dearly beloved, I am not asking to be sanctified.
Pray for a garden to bloom, or for a path
to be clear. I want to be naked. I want to wander.

--
Logan February is a Nigerian poet and a book reviewer. His work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Vinyl, Tinderbox, The Bind, The Raleigh Review, and more. He has been nominated for Best of the Net Awards, and his first full length manuscript, Mannequin in the Nude, was a finalist for the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. He is the author of How to Cook a Ghost (Glass Poetry Press, 2017), Painted Blue with Saltwater (Indolent Books, 2018) & Mannequin in the Nude (PANK Books, 2019). You can find him at loganfebruary.com